Virtualization in the data center decouples the application being run on a server from the actual server. Typically, virtualization management tools provide visibility of the application being run on a particular logical server via an IP address. This is demonstrated by a screenshot 10 from the industry leading virtualization software vendor VMWare seen in FIG. 1.
The left hand side of the screen shown in FIG. 1 lists hosts by IP address and the applications running on those hosts. This view is a logical view. It is an incomplete view because it does not show the physical view of the hosts and applications.
A view that supplements the logical view is shown in FIG. 2.
The view in FIG. 2 shows two virtual hosts 12 within a rack 14. The numbers within the boxes 16 shown on the virtual hosts 12 represent the number of virtual machines that are residing on that host. By clicking on the box or referring to the location tree, the details of the virtual hosts can be determined. This physical virtualization view enables better informed decisions about virtual machine placement to be made.
Typically, there is a load balancing function within virtualization management tools. Functional clusters of hosts are formed as a framework for load balancing decisions. This allows workload to be evenly distributed among functional hosts. This function does not extend to physical balancing.
An example of a logically unbalanced cluster is shown in FIG. 3. In this figure, each rectangle 18 within a cluster 20 represents a physical server (or host) in that cluster. Each virtual machine 22 within a physical server 20 runs one or more apps 24 on an operating system (OS) 26.
The same clusters as in FIG. 3 are shown in FIG. 4 as logically balanced. All virtual machines 22 (assumed to be of equal workload) are now, in FIG. 4, evenly spread across all virtual hosts 18 of the same function (for example, finance, marketing, and engineering).
FIG. 5 shows a hypothetical physical view 30 of a logically balanced workload. The hosts 18 are shown within cabinets 32. Since the virtual hosts of common cluster functions are interspersed within physical cabinets 32, the result is considered to be, according to one policy, a physically unbalanced load. For example, the physically unbalanced load shown in FIG. 5 may result in a less efficient use of physical infrastructure resources than a physically balanced load would. It requires more cold air to cool a physically unbalanced load, as shown in FIG. 5, than to cool a physically balanced load in which all virtual machines 22 are assigned to hosts 18 that are as close as possible to the bottom of the rack. Also, if three-phase power is being used, power distribution is inefficient when not balanced across three phases.
Without a view of the system that indicates the physical locations of the devices upon which virtual machines are running, there is no way to know if this logical balancing, as shown in FIGS. 4 and 5, has had a negative effect on physical balancing. There is a need for a virtualization visualization and distribution system that takes into account physical aspects of the hosts upon which virtual machines are running.